Weed or Wild Nourishment?

I’ve spent a lot of time pulling weeds.

Starting with the most common ones—Creeping Charlie taking over the whole backyard when I first moved in with Dave, grass growing in garden beds, plantain, dandelions, and here in Minnesota, those purple bellflowers that seem to spread everywhere…

Other weeds that have caught my attention include all the ways my Enneagram type One personality judges that I (or others) need weeding. Over the years, I’ve dug out my messy emotions, pulled up my gut instincts, rooted out my raw and uncontrollable sexuality, and excavated all the wild impulses that might lead me astray.

“Got a dirty eye, see a dirty world.”
~ Mark Nepo, in The Book of Awakening

I think we all have dirty eyes—in the sense that our vision is clouded from seeing life as it is. Perhaps it’s Enneagram type that clouds, or maybe it’s family upbringing, or maybe it’s trauma, or our culture or religion…and most likely a combination of all of the above.

This clouding keeps us stuck in one way of seeing.

Plant—Weed.
Healthy—Unhealthy.
Clean—Messy.
Civilized—Wild.
Heaven—Earth.

But what if that plant, instead of being a weed, is Wild Nourishment?

Over the years, as I started realizing there was such a thing as wild nourishment…

I dug up the dandelion from my yard, ate some, and transplanted the rest into its own bed in my backyard. I enjoy eating it all summer, but especially when it’s tender in the spring (now!).

I pulled out the plantain and dried it for use in tea and herbal salves. (Internally for indigestion, externally for skin ailments.)

The grass spreading into flower and veggie gardens I still weed out—and the Creeping Charlie, too!

I gave up on weeding out the purple bellflowers—I still manage them in some places, but in others, I let them be a lovely, green ground cover, and on our front stairs, their purple bell flower welcomes people to our home. (Dave’s youngest helped me get this—I was madly ripping them out one summer when he said how he missed the greenery and flowers on the bare concrete stairs, and I realized I did, too. It has saved me a lot of work over the years!)

And my own inner weeding?

I am finding the gifts of wild nourishment of my fuller self—

How my unedited emotions, my instinctual-knowing, my juicy sexuality, and my spontaneous impulses don’t lead me astray, but nourish and bring more wholeness to my life.

I feel more alive, more embodied, more present on this earth when I embrace all of me in this way.

How about you?

Are there ways you see through dirty eyes and try to weed out parts of yourself that are unacceptable? Or the world around you? How could those parts you are pulling out be important to your growth into the fully alive human being you are?

Smile into Spring

Smile.

Yes, right now, just try it on your face.

Notice how you feel right now.

For me it’s instantly softer, more joyous, more at ease. Right. Now.

As we teach in Laughter Yoga, just the simple act of intentional smiling and laughter sparks the feel-good neuro-transmitters in the brain. You immediately feel more connected, happy, and pleasured.

Who doesn’t want more of that?

Spring Equinox is here today,
Tuesday March 20th, 2018
at 11:15 am CT.

Especially in the northern climes, like Minnesota where I live, spring helps us smile again!

On Sunday, I hosted a Tea & Poetry Gathering. Just hearing the spring-themed poems that welcomed “rushing rain,” “wild spring,” “this earth is our heaven,” “buds bursting on the trees,” “the encouragement of light,” the “frolic,” and the invitation to the heart to “rave on” helped my bodysoul “step into spring.”

Spring always invites us to start fresh, to begin again, to welcome the new green life awakening deep within.

Why not use this natural, seasonal impulse to re-fresh and re-source our lives instead of waiting for a crisis to do it for us?

We can re-orient in so many different ways. Today, I offer just a few:

Try my new gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free Breakfast Muffins recipe for a simple, healthy start to your day.
Try on the Smiling Practice below, that you can do anytime in your day, to choose new, fresh, yummy life!

Smiling Practice

“Sometimes your joy is the source
of your smile, and sometimes your smile
is the source of your joy.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

For more awareness, close your eyes, but this can be done with them open or closed.

Let a smile start on your lips–draw the corners of your lips up toward your ears slowly. Notice how, if you let it, the smile naturally broadens and widens, taking up more of your face. Feel how it resets and refreshes your brain. Take a few breaths here, sensing your body.

Now smile into your heart–start at the center of your chest and imagine the smile spreading out from there, up toward your breasts (or pecs) and all the way to your shoulders, filling your chest with this joyful, easeful energy. Breathe in and out, sensing and feeling.

Now smile into your belly–from your pubic bone, let the smile widen out and up toward your hip bones. Imagine bathing all of your lower belly organs in this goodness and well-being. Breathe, feel, and sense…

Breathe into all three Centers–Belly, Heart, and Head, starting in the center–pubic bone, center of chest, lips–and let the breath spread the smile in each Center, filling you up with yumminess. On the inbreath, breathe the smile into being, on the outbreath, release any efforting. Stay here, smiling, breathing, sensing, and feeling as long as you choose, and then bring this sweet moment of awakening to your true nature back into your day.

a thousand ways…

What does it mean to be awake?

An age-old question, for sure.

If things aren’t going wrong in our lives, we sometimes don’t even know that we’re not very awake.

It can be so easy to glide along in the comfortable illusion of awakeness.

I’m fine.
I don’t let my partner’s idiosyncrasies bother me.
I swallow back my frustration when the children act out.
I know how to self-medicate with chocolate, alcohol, TV, sleep, or …

But there is more possible!

What if you felt your irritation rise up, understood its connection to your past, and, instead of swallowing down frustration, responded to your children with attunement, helping them navigate their emotions?

What if you had integrated the connection to your own needs and concerns, instead of inwardly cringing, when your partner does something a little whacky, thus opening up the awareness of her/his precious individual expression?

What if you had energy to savor your life—every drop of it, instead of numbing out to soothe yourself?

That’s what waking up
can open up in you!!

Waking up is not just a experience of the mind. Waking up involves all 3 Centers—Belly/Body, Heart, and Head.

Opening one Center can support the opening of the others. All are intimately intertwined in our awakening.

I recently read Brené Brown’s book Braving the Wildnerness, on what it takes to show up with awakeness in the world, in particular, in this political climate. I LOVED this concept:

Strong Back. Soft Front. Wild Heart.

As we awaken, we develop a strong and flexible spine—representing our will and ability to focus (Body and Head Centers)—instead of a rigidly over-protective back.

When our back is sturdy and flexible enough, instead of hardening or collapsing to protect a weak spine and defend from hurt, our front is open, soft and available to the world (Body and Heart Centers).

And within that soft front blossoms what Brené calls our Wild Heart. The Wild Heart is an awakening heart that is soft, open, and available to life’s beauty, chaos, unpredictability... Not numbed out or stuck in any one feeling, but able to respond to the paradox, feeling deeply and wildly available to life.

As Rumi says, “There are a thousand ways to
kneel and kiss the ground,” a thousand ways—and likely more—to practice waking up.

What are you working on in your life right
now that supports your waking up?

New Year, New Light, New Practices!

Remember with me for a moment what it was like for our ancestors, for some of us, even as close as our great-great grandparents…

As the Autumn passed, the days grew darker and darker.

After the harvest celebrations and the fields gone fallow, people cozied up together, sharing the warmth and the light of fire as the darkness grew deeper every day. They structured their lives around the light, sleeping when it was dark, up to 12 hours or more per night.

At the peak of darkness, when it seemed like its reign would never lose its grip, the people started to notice that, slowly but surely, the days were beginning to grow lighter again. They ventured out earlier and stayed out later…

The return of the light meant the return of life–of days warming, of plants starting to grow again, of animals mating and giving birth…

It’s no wonder that this season, regardless of which

religious celebration you participate in, is all about

waiting for and celebrating the return of the light.

This natural seasonal rhythm is built into our genes, passed down through thousands of years of biological, ancestral memory.

We celebrate that there is always a new spark of light–birthed right in the middle of the darkest of days.

We celebrate that there is always an end to the depth of darkness.

We celebrate that there is always the light that returns again, bringing with it new growth and new life.

What new sparks of light within do you want to tend?

What new ways is your soul asking you to grow–to

open, to melt, to become more whole in the New Year?

Before we can nurture the new light, we have to first get clear on what we want–we must dream, vision, and imagine the life we want to live!

That’s what this dark time is meant for.

We sleep, we rest, we become more receptive to the life, the light that wants to live through us with practice, introspection, contemplation, meditation, prayer…

I have a perfect practice opportunity for you, one
that will support your sacred dreaming and visioning time.

Create space in your life through presence practices.

Feel more centered, more soulful, more connected.

Reconnect with your daily actions and make them into sacred ritual.

I’d LOVE to practice with you as a sacred beginning

to the New Year of more Light!

making life meaningful

“We are often tired and imbalanced not because we are doing too much, but because we are doing too little of what is most real and meaningful.”
~ Marianne Williamson

Moving into the holidays, we do get tired and imbalanced.

Most often, we ARE doing too much—

Working hard to earn the money we need to not only survive, but to buy gifts for our loved ones,
Making time for more connections with those we care about,
Decorating and creating a home environment that will help us shift into the mood for the holy-days…

And even though all of this is true, what if the problem were not really the “too much,” but the fact that we are not engaging with what is “most real and meaningful”?

The poet David Whyte tells a story that illustrates this in his book Crossing the Unknown Sea. He was working for a cause he loved, doing work he was good at, and feeling driven to work hard and make a difference in the world. But he was burned out, exhausted, and feeling disconnected from himself all the time. Reading poetry together, a friend gently commented that he was not exhausted from overwork, but from not living a wholehearted life. In his case, he was ignoring the inner call to step into his vocation as a poet. The harder he worked, even though it was for a good cause, the less time he made for what had meaning to him, what was most real.

What is most real and meaningful for you
during the holy-days?

How can you live a more wholehearted life right now?

My life and work are about meeting life exactly as it is and finding ways to be more present and mindful right in the midst of it all, in the thick of it.

Here are some simple ways you can practice presence in the life you are living right now, so that you can feel more meaning, more enjoyment, and more depth:

Take a 3-5 minute Do Nothing Break
Do a 3-minute Heart Opening Practice (video)
Practice with each step
Try a Tea Ritual

Another focus of attention to help you feel more meaning and purpose in your life is to mindfully engage with rituals that create a sacred container for your life.

These might be seasonal rituals, like the Holidays—perhaps you attend services, decorate your home, or celebrate the waning and waxing of the light. (If you’re in St. Paul, please join me for a Winter Solstice Celebration on December 21st.)

Or they could be practices you consciously engage with to create a sense of the sacred in each day, like you can find in my free Welcoming the Sacred E-Book.

If you’d like to practice in community, I’ve created a free, online 5-day Practice Presence for Life Journey for you! Join me to get on the right foot in the New Year and set yourself up with meaningful practices to help you live a more wholehearted life, every day.

Practicing Gratefulness

I taught a class on practicing gratitude just before Thanksgiving.

We explored how we can’t just assume an “attitude of gratitude,” but we can practice to be present, to open our heart, mind, and body to more gratefulness.

When we brainstormed how gratefulness / gratitude feels, there were so many ways we experience it on the inside. We feel connected, warm, loving, kind, happy, open, excited, tingly, uplifted, grounded, centered, accepting, positive, and more…

What about you? How does gratefulness sense and feel to you?

These are all aspects of Who we truly are.

Of course we would want to be in touch with them! We can think about them as aspects of our Essence.

Your Essence is something that never goes away. It is an essential part of you, not changed by mood or anything that happens to you. It feels like home, like our birthright.

When we feel in touch with this, we can relax.

We know all will be well.

We make better decisions.

We trust life.

We talked about a lot of different ways to practice opening to gratefulness—from gratitude journals to thanking those who help you, from saying grace at meals to practicing random acts of kindness… The one I’m going to try on in the New Year is a Gratitude Jar!

There are so many ways to open! 🙂

Please join me in the simple 3-minute body practice below to invite more opening–to help release the habitual contraction we hold in our bodies so that we can make space for more gratefulness and be more present.

Gratitude is a Presence Practice.

When we want something, we find a way to get it or work toward it, to practice.

We have to prioritize practicing gratefulness!

Not to get it right.
Not to reach some ultimate gratitude high.
But to be more present, to open our hearts—for ourselves and for the world.

If you want an opportunity to practice with me for a week, join the
free online 5-Day Practice Presence for Life Journey,
starting in January.

Set yourself up with a sacred and mindful start to the New Year!

#15daysofgrateful

We’ve passed Autumn Equinox, Halloween, and now Thanksgiving is coming, and after that the Winter Holidays and the New Year!!!

Every year, it feels like time begins to move ever more quickly just about now, doesn’t it?

Here in Minnesota, the second half of Fall is here. Overnight, the cold and graying blew in–we went from gorgeous blue skies and Indian Summer to hurrying to empty the rain barrels and rake the leaves, to winter coats and mitts, and to putting the garden to bed.

We have 15 days–if you include today–
to prepare our hearts for Thanksgiving.

Let’s use them to practice gratefulness!!

I’m choosing “gratefulness” instead of “gratitude” because it feels more active to me, even though they are both from the same root word, going back to Latin, gratus, or pleasing, agreeable, kind. Let’s practice creating these feelings in our bodysoul so that by the time Thanksgiving arrives, regardless of how quickly we are moving, the experience of gratefulness can shine through.

How it Works:

Every day, practice being grateful–for something as small as appreciating the 1st sip of tea or coffee or the soft, welcoming cocoon of your bed, to something as big as the fact that you are alive on this planet!
Here’s the key: Being grateful is not an idea in your mind, although your mind might help you come up with something to practice with.
- In order to practice being grateful, you need to take the time to actually experience being grateful in your whole bodysoul. You need to feel the gratefulness.
- Where do you experience it in your body? What does it sense like?
- How do you experience it in your heart (feelings)?
- What happens in your mind (thoughts, quality of mind)?
- Savor it, take it all the way in, infusing yourself with gratefulness as much as you can, from the tips of your toes to the top of your head!
Then post below and/or on your profile in Facebook with this tag: #15daysofgrateful.

I’ll begin:

I am grateful that we finished painting our dining room! #15daysofgrateful

Ready, set, go!

If you want more support practicing being grateful, join me at my class, Practicing Gratitude, Sunday, November 19th from 1:00-2:30.

Gratitude heals your heart, helps your mind calm down, and even creates health in your body. So, why do we tend to wait until Thanksgiving to really focus on it? Join Holistic Life Coach Katy Taylor to learn not only the power of gratitude, but also hands-on practices you can take into your daily life.

I look forward to practicing with you!

with each step

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them.” ~ Einstein

Dave and I taught a daylong on the Law of Three, a deeply embedded teaching of the Enneagram, for our Minnesota Enneagram community this past Saturday.

The more I work with this teaching in my own life, the more I experience this truth—

When I’m stuck trying to solve something with my thinking, I don’t solve it by chewing over the same thoughts…

When I’m stuck in my feelings, re-experiencing them over and over again, they do not release…

There’s actually something valuable about that funny and famous cartoon (I paraphrase):

Patient: Doctor, when I move my leg like this, it hurts.
Doctor: Then don’t move it like that! 🙂

If we’re not running our habitual patterns to find an answer—overthinking, overfeeling, avoiding, denying, repressing, all of which cause us pain—what DO we do?

We apply what the Buddhists call skillful means.

Monday morning after my run, aware of a problem my mind and heart had not solved from the day before, I was practicing one of my favorite walking meditations from Thich Nhat Hanh:

The mind goes in a thousand directions.
The beautiful path is the path of peace.
With each step, a gentle wind blows.
With each step, a flower blooms.

This is an example of using skillful means—

When you’re stuck in your mind or heart, running the same old tapes…

Try coming back to the body.

As I walked this meditation, my senses came alive–with each step:

the gentle, cool breeze was blowing and kissing my face,
the flowers in yards and boulevards were blooming,
the trees were standing solid, tall, rooted, their leaves waving to me as I passed,
the sun filtered through the canopy, lighting up all it touched,
the moon, moving to half-waning, holding watch in the sky.

And my body came online, her intelligence sparkling, softening, supporting all that was trying to work itself out in my mind and heart.

No big “AHA,” but now, where there wasn’t before, there is space for something new to arise.

It can be this simple.

We can trust the intelligence of the body to support the heart and mind.

What body practices do you have in place to help you open to more spaciousness when you are stuck?

Save

Season of Celebration and Regret

The light is changing and dark is coming faster in the eve and staying longer in the morn.

Once again, the trees are dropping their leaves, returning them to the ground.

Plants are flowering and fruiting, putting the last of their energy into ripening and celebrating, giving their all.

Autumn Equinox is Friday, September 22nd

at 3:02 pm CT,

marking this next pass through the seasonal rhythm that holds our lives.

I am experiencing sadness that summer and all its bounty is waning and gratefulness for the bright, crisp Fall days, colorful leaves, and invitation to turn inward. All accompanied by a sense that life is moving by so quickly!

The Jewish tradition has this Fall theme built into its yearly cycle.

September 21st marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year with Rosh Hashanah, the Days of Awe, and then Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on September 30th.

There is joy for the opportunity to begin a new year combined with an inner examination of the past year and atonement for regrets in order to start the new year freshly, cleanly, returned home to God.

This is truly the season of Both/And,
of acknowledging all we have to celebrate
and all we have to regret.

Autumn invites us to use this changing of the seasons as a time to pause and assess our harvest.

What are you celebrating from the bounty of summertime?

What will you pick and savor and what will you let fall like leaves to the ground?

What needs to be cut back or released so that you can live your life
with more presence?

What did not turn out as you had hoped?

Do you need to repair any relationships—with yourself, others, or the Divine—
in order to return home?

For my part, when I look back, I see I have fallen again into piling my plate too full, and I regret that I didn’t make more time for what I call “right living,” living the daily rhythms of my life with less rushing and more connection.

I am letting go of a lot of things this the Fall to make space for slowing down to a rhythm that is more sustainable for living my life—workshops and events I wanted to attend, the poetry list I was sending out, preaching, music gigs, tea events I host, travel, even some teaching. I feel sad to not do these things that I love, and I so much look forward to the space I am opening up for more presence-full living.

There is always so much to hold in our lives—to celebrate and to regret.

Especially when we widen our gaze to include not only our individual lives, but the life of the earth, the life of our political environment, the lives of many who are suffering and many who do so much goodness in the world.

Sometimes finding our way to the goodness, the beauty, the wholeness, and the celebration is hampered by our inability to take a deep accounting of our actual lives. Aligning with this seasonal orientation, we need to acknowledge and work with the ways we are holding ourselves and others with unkindness so that we can recalibrate our lives and start fresh and clean again.

This usually invokes not only celebration but also a need for repair. Just as our Jewish friends are practicing atonement,

so our souls yearn for forgiveness,

of ourselves and of others—for harm we have done and harm we have suffered.

How about you? What regrets do you have that could be
eased by the soothing balm of forgiveness?

I’d love to support you this Autumn in recalibrating, repairing, and returning home to yourself with my new, 4-part series:

Save

Do Two Halves Make a Whole?

Apple pie and cheddar cheese.

Fear and courage.

Hungry and satisfied.

Independent and dependent.

Grief and compassion.

Utter lostness and presence.

Single and partnered.

Strength and helplessness.

Female and male.

Dualities. Opposites. Two halves of a whole.

I name them, breathe them, own them.

They are part of our human experience.

Without one, the other does not arise.

Often in relationship we see this clearly. If I hold down the pole of the kids keeping their room clean, you will hold down the opposite one—the kids should do what they want. If I say I want to work all day, you say, we’d better give ourselves enough time to rest and do other things…

It’s like we are covering the full spectrum of life in these dualities.

One complements the other. How could I really feel satisfied if I never felt hungry? Without being lost, how would I feel my presence? How could I really enjoy my apple pie for breakfast without a good hunk of cheddar cheese? 😊 (Thanks, mom!)

Diamond Approach teacher AH Almaas takes it a step further and says that the qualities of our Essence arise as needed.

It’s not that we just don’t feel the pole without its opposite. An Essential Quality like Compassion has no need to arise unless a state of suffering like grief or fear or shame calls for it. Strength only arises when needed—when I’m feeling helpless, weak, unconfident, etc.

One is not “good” and the other “bad.”

That’s just another duality—each side of the equation keeping the other alive…

The old saying “Two halves make a whole” has some relevance here.

My mom used to emphasize that in relationship, that saying is not true—if we come to each other as halves, we won’t find wholeness. We each need to be whole in ourselves first.

This also applies in looking at life through the lens of duality. If I get caught up in juxtaposing the halves, the good-bad, strong-weak, independent-dependent, happy-sad, etc., I am not living into the wholeness that is possible.

Holding each pole of the duality, welcoming it, getting to know it, and not grasping, but opening ourselves (heart, body, and mind) allows something new, fresh, and essential to arise.

How do you work with duality in your life?

Dave & I are teaching a full-day workshop about this:

And I will be teaching a 4-week series on Forgiveness, which I have found is a HUGE part of being able to open to the innate wholeness, too:

Unfolding the Heart: The Journey of Forgiveness